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SPORTS

CRICKET

Cricket is a sport which is
played between two teams of eleven players each who score runs (points) by
running between two sets of three small, wooden posts called wickets. Each of
the wickets is at one end of a rectangle of flattened grass called the pitch.
Around the pitch is a much larger oval of grass called the cricket ground
There is 30 yard circle between the ground.

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a 20-metre (22-yard) pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striking the ball bowled at the wicket with the bat, while the bowling and fielding side tries to prevent this and dismiss each player (so they are "out"). Means of dismissal include being bowled, when the ball hits the stumps and dislodges the bails, and by the fielding side catching the ball after it is hit by the bat, but before it hits the ground. When ten players have been dismissed, the innings ends and the teams swap roles. The game is adjudicated by two umpires, aided by a third umpire and match referee in international matches. They communicate with two off-field scorers who record the match's statistical information.

There are various formats ranging from Twenty20, played over a few hours with each team batting for a single innings of 20 overs, to Test matches, played over five days with unlimited overs and the teams each batting for two innings of unlimited length. Traditionally cricketers play in all-white kit, but in limited overs cricket they wear club or team colours. In addition to the basic kit, some players wear protective gear to prevent injury caused by the ball, which is a hard, solid spheroid made of compressed leather with a slightly raised sewn seam enclosing a cork core which is layered with tightly wound string.

Historically, cricket's origins are uncertain and the earliest definite reference is in south-east England in the middle of the 16th century. It spread globally with the expansion of the British Empire, leading to the first international matches in the second half of the 19th century. The game's governing body is the International Cricket Council (ICC), which has over 100 members, twelve of which are full members who play Test matches. The game's rules are held in a code called the Laws of Cricket which is owned and maintained by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in London. The sport is followed primarily in the Indian subcontinent, Australasia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, southern Africa and the West Indies, its globalisation occurring during the expansion of the British Empire and remaining popular into the 21st century. Women's cricket, which is organised and played separately, has also achieved international standard. The most successful side playing international cricket is Australia, having won seven One Day International trophies, including five World Cups, more than any other country, and having been the top-rated Test sidemore than any other country.

CHESS

Chess is a two-player strategy
board game played on a chessboard, a checkered gameboard with 64 squares
arranged in an 8×8 grid. The game is played by millions of people worldwide.
Chess is believed to have originated in India sometime before the 7th century.
The game was derived from the Indian game chaturanga, which is also the likely
ancestor of the Eastern strategy games xiangqi, janggi, and shogi. Chess
reached Europe by the 9th century, due to the Umayyad conquest of Hispania. The
pieces assumed their current powers in Spain in the late 15th century; the
rules were standardized in the 19th century.Play does not involve hidden
information. Each player begins with 16 pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks,
two knights, two bishops, and eight pawns. Each of the six piece types moves
differently, with the most powerful being the queen and the least powerful the
pawn. The objective is to checkmate[note 1] the opponent's king by placing it
under an inescapable threat of capture. To this end, a player's pieces are used
to attack and capture the opponent's pieces, while supporting each other.
During the game, play typically involves making exchanges of one piece for an
opponent's similar piece, but also finding and engineering opportunities to
trade one piece for two, or to get a better position. In addition to checkmate,
a player wins the game if the opponent resigns, or (in a timed game) runs out
of time. There are also several ways that a game can end in a draw.The first
generally recognized World Chess Champion, Wilhelm Steinitz, claimed his title
in 1886. Since 1948, the World Championship has been regulated by the
Fédération Internationale des Échecs (FIDE), the game's international governing
body. FIDE also awards life-time master titles to skilled players, the highest
of which is grandmaster. Many national chess organizations have a title system
of their own. FIDE also organizes the Women's World Championship, the World
Junior Championship, the World Senior Championship, the Blitz and Rapid World
Championships, and the Chess Olympiad, a popular competition among
international teams. FIDE is a member of the International Olympic Committee,
which can be considered as a recognition of chess as a sport. Several national
sporting bodies (for example the Spanish Consejo Superior de Deportes[3]) also
recognize chess as a sport. Chess was included in the 2006 and 2010 Asian
Games. There is also a Correspondence Chess World Championship and a World
Computer Chess Championship. Online chess has opened amateur and professional
competition to a wide and varied group of players.Since the second half of the
20th century, computers have been programmed to play chess with increasing
success, to the point where the strongest personal computers play at a higher
level than the best human players. Since the 1990s, computer analysis has
contributed significantly to chess theory, particularly in the endgame. The IBM
computer Deep Blue was the first machine to overcome a reigning World Chess
Champion in a match when it defeated Garry Kasparov in 1997. The rise of strong
chess engines runnable on hand-held devices has led to increasing concerns
about cheating during tournaments.There are many variants of chess that utilize
different rules, pieces, or boards. One of these, Chess960 (originally named
"Fischerandom"), incorporates regular chess rules but with one of 960
different possible start-up positions. Chess960 has gained widespread
popularity as well as some FIDE recognition.

FOOTBALL

Football is a family of team sports that involve, to
varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word football
is understood to refer to whichever form of football is the most popular in the
regional context in which the word appears. Sports commonly called football in
certain places include association football (known as soccer in some
countries); gridiron football (specifically American football or Canadian
football); Australian rules football; rugby football (either rugby league or rugby
union); and Gaelic football. These different variations of football are known
as football codes.There are a number of references to traditional, ancient, or
prehistoric ball games played by indigenous peoples in many different parts of
the world. Contemporary codes of football can be traced back to the
codification of these games at English public schools during the nineteenth
century. The expansion of the British Empire allowed these rules of football to
spread to areas of British influence outside the directly controlled Empire. By
the end of the nineteenth century, distinct regional codes were already
developing: Gaelic football, for example, deliberately incorporated the rules
of local traditional football games in order to maintain their heritage. In
1888, The Football League was founded in England, becoming the first of many
professional football competitions. During the twentieth century, several of
the various kinds of football grew to become some of the most popular team
sports in the world.A Chinese game called cuju has been recognised by
FIFA as the first version of the game with regular rules. It existed during the
Han dynasty and possibly the Qin dynasty, in the second and third centuries BC.
The Japanese version of cuju is kemari (蹴鞠), and
was developed during the Asuka period. This is known to have been played within
the Japanese imperial court in Kyoto from about 600 AD. In kemari several
people stand in a circle and kick a ball to each other, trying not to let the
ball drop to the ground (much like keepie uppie).

The Ancient Greeks and Romans
are known to have played many ball games, some of which involved the use of the
feet. The Roman game harpastum is believed to have been adapted from a Greek
team game known as "ἐπίσκυρος" (Episkyros) or "φαινίνδα"
(phaininda), which is mentioned by a Greek playwright, Antiphanes (388–311 BC)
and later referred to by the Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria (c. 150
– c. 215 AD). These games appear to have resembled rugby football. The Roman
politician Cicero (106–43 BC) describes the case of a man who was killed whilst
having a shave when a ball was kicked into a barber's shop. Roman ball games
already knew the air-filled ball, the follis. Episkyros is recognised as an
early form of football by FIFA.There are a number of references to traditional,
ancient, or prehistoric ball games, played by indigenous peoples in many
different parts of the world. For example, in 1586, men from a ship commanded
by an English explorer named John Davis, went ashore to play a form of football
with Inuit (Eskimo) people in Greenland. There are later accounts of an Inuit
game played on ice, called Aqsaqtuk. Each match began with two teams facing
each other in parallel lines, before attempting to kick the ball through each
other team's line and then at a goal. In 1610, William Strachey, a colonist at
Jamestown, Virginia recorded a game played by Native Americans, called
Pahsaheman.[citation needed] On the Australian continent several tribes of
indigenous people played kicking and catching games with stuffed balls which
have been generalised by historians as Marn Grook (Djab Wurrung for "game
ball"). The earliest historical account is an anecdote from the 1878 book
by Robert Brough-Smyth, The Aborigines of Victoria, in which a man called
Richard Thomas is quoted as saying, in about 1841 in Victoria, Australia, that
he had witnessed Aboriginal people playing the game: "Mr Thomas describes
how the foremost player will drop kick a ball made from the skin of a possum and
how other players leap into the air in order to catch it." Some historians
have theorised that Marn Grook was one of the origins of Australian rules
football.The Māori in New Zealand played a game called Ki-o-rahi consisting of
teams of seven players play on a circular field divided into zones, and score
points by touching the 'pou' (boundary markers) and hitting a central 'tupu' or
target.Games played in Mesoamerica with rubber balls by indigenous peoples are
also well-documented as existing since before this time, but these had more
similarities to basketball or volleyball, and no links have been found between
such games and modern football sports. Northeastern American Indians,
especially the Iroquois Confederation, played a game which made use of net
racquets to throw and catch a small ball; however, although it is a ball-goal
foot game, lacrosse (as its modern descendant is called) is likewise not
usually classed as a form of "football".